On my days off from school, mostly consisting of weekends, I’m not studying, reading or planning my extravagant future, aside from what I tell most of my teachers. I’m hanging out with friends and doing cretinous, childish things.

No, I don’t know what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. No, I don’t know where I want to go to college. No, I haven’t studied for the ACT. Yes, I’ll be home by midnight… maybe. This behavior is not just a recent outbreak among kids these days, nor are we the first generation of kids that do ignorant activities to ease our minds from what we have to complete by Monday, but we are the first to experience stress like no other. Each generation of kids acquires more expectations, more responsibilities and more tension than the last. Average children today experience more anxiety than psychiatric patients in mental institutions during the early 1950s. Could this be from “those dang cell phones,” or maybe “all that crap we are putting into our bodies?” Possibly. Or could it be that we are being pulled into a riptide of life that we can’t physically and mentally undergo?

Vaping: the new addictive substance that kids don’t understand the effect of. Phones: a toy kids can’t control, or put down. Life: the source of it all. We acknowledge the influence these inventions have on us, yet some still continue to use them because they give us something that nothing else can: solace. Adults wonder why teenagers are turbulent and ungovernable in this day and age and I have the answer they have been violently searching for. Our lives are consistently overflowing with expectancy, slowly massacring our thoughts and feelings. We have little time to relieve ourselves of this unattainable idea of what our life needs to look like in the future, so when we do come across a brisk opening of air, we make the most of it. We stay out late doing things we all know you adults did when you were our age. And just like you once did, we attempt to keep this pocket of air lasting for as long as we can. 

You may think that teenagers are uncontrollable, unpredictable and a whirlwind of drama, and you are right. We are surrounded by peer pressure, parent pressure, faced with questions neighboring our blurry future and a form of Satan telling us to just forget about it all. We have disguises and escapes that allow us to enjoy the fact that we are still kids. We aren’t “falling off the deep end;” we are doing things that make our minds slip from reality. Although we don’t always make the most principle choices, we learn from their consequences and they ultimately shape us into the reputable people we will one day become. So, let’s set aside the judgments and constant worrying about your children. Let’s embrace the fact that they have gotten to where they are today. And let’s allow them to grow into the people they are meant to be, not forced to be.